After Sandy, parish unites to save a couple’s wedding

I don’t know about you, but I could use a little good news about now. Check this out, from the Trenton Monitor:

Take one bride and groom whose plans for their special day intersected with the wrath of Hurricane Sandy, mix with a parish united in the desire to see them wed by candlelight despite the devastation all around them, add heaping measures of faith, hope and charity and you have the perfect recipe for triumphing over what’s been referred to as a “perfect” storm.

Such is the story of how the nuptials of Amanda Anne Santoro and Michael Gary Esposito began unfolding in St. Robert Bellarmine Parish, Freehold, just two days after Sandy struck with full fury, decimating huge swaths of the coastline of the Trenton Diocese and making its presence dangerously felt throughout the huge territory which includes Monmouth, Ocean, Mercer and Burlington Counties.

The damage was so severe and so universal there can be little doubt plans for scores of weddings scheduled for the first weekend in November unraveled including Amanda and Michael’s.

On Nov. 1, Amanda and her mom, Stephanie, turned to their pastor, Msgr. Sam A. Sirianni, telling him that even though the wedding reception was cancelled by the venue because of the hurricane, the couple very much wanted their Church wedding. Despite the fact that the church was without light or heat, Msgr. Sirianni quickly agreed.

And, when Mrs. Santoro asked Msgr. Sirianni if it would be alright to bring in a sheet cake for a very small reception after the wedding, it set off a chain of events that soon escalated into a full-scale parish effort to give the young couple the closest thing they could to the reception of their dreams.